Friday, April 30, 2010

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that —
We'd put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-
"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And its likely they'd a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

A pocket poem can be short, small, compact — or can be as long as you want it to be. (I've seen some big pockets in my time.) It can be a poem you carry in your head, others you slip into your checkbook (because when you're writing a check, one needs the salve of a poem).

I hang a couple on my walls at work.

I also recite this one to David whenever I'm feeling clever:

'Twas in a restaurant they met,Romeo and Juliet.He had no cash to pay the debtso Romeo'd what Juliet.

Here are a couple from my friend Beth Field.

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.

Some come from ahead and some come from behind.

But I've brought a big bat and I'm ready you see.

Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me.

- Dr. Seuss

Shake and shake
The catsup bottle.
None will come,
And then a lot'll.
- Richard Armour

What's your favorite pocket poem? E-mail me and receive a book of poetry for your effort!

Monday, April 26, 2010

While the date of William Shakespeare's birth is only a guess, there is record of one of the earliest experiences of his young life: he was baptized on this date in 1564. In his honor, I post a "poem" from his play As You Like It.

Jaques to Duke Senior

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

This poem by Liona Averill reminds me of my friend Corinne, who at age seven said her favorite Star Wars character was Princess Leia because "she didn't wait for someone to save her." Thanks to Liona for sharing her poem and to my sister-in-law Jeannie Fow for discovering this poet!

Saturday, April 24, 2010

I just discovered a new holiday: National Dead Poets Remembrance Day! It is October 7, the anniversary of the death of Edgar Allen Poe. Many states are holding special events in 2010 to commemorate the new holiday; check out what's happening in your state.

Celebrate the poets in your neighborhood, living and dead — and if you need to know who some of them are, visit the Dead Poets Society to find out who's buried in your state.

Macabre? Sure. But hilarious, too!

In honor of passed poets everywhere, here is a poem by one of my favorite poets of all time: Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979).

A Miracle for Breakfast

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.

He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.

I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--

and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.

Friday, April 23, 2010

After a Noisy Night

The man I love enters the kitchen
with a groan, he just
woke up, his hair a Rorschach test.
A minty kiss, a hand
on my neck, coffee, two percent milk,
microwave. He collapses
on a chair, stunned with sleep,
yawns, groans again, complains
about his dry sinuses and crusted nose.
I want to tell him how
much he slept, how well,
the cacophony of his snoring
pumping in long wheezes
and throttles—the debacle
of rhythm—hours erratic
with staccato of pants and puffs,
crescendi of gulps, chokes,
pectoral sputters and spits.
But the microwave goes ding!
A short little ding! – sharp
as a guillotine—loud enough to stop
my words from killing the moment.
And during the few seconds
it takes the man I love
to open the microwave, stir,
sip and sit there staring
at his mug, I remember the vows
I made to my pillows, to fate
and God: I'll stop eating licorice,
become a blonde, a lumberjack,
a Catholic, anything,
but bring a man to me:
so I go to him: Sorry, honey,
sorry you had such a rough night,
hold his gray head against my heart
and kiss him, kiss him.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

When the black herds of the rain were grazing,
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.

Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning sliver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all
along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Peter Pan, The Laundry and Your Poem

Each washing machine at Shockey's has a name in black script,Evelyn, Ida, Donna, or Tom.
It's a quiet afternoon and the change machines aren't cooperating:
They take a five-dollar bill and spit a single quarter back.

Amidst the kids' laundry, separated into three piles,
Like the children in the Darling family-big,middle,baby-
Your poem arrives.

Your handwriting on the envelope, some type of trick with time,
Propels me to another moment ten years before,
When I found your poem together in my mailbox with an orange.

I was quite content, before Peter Pan arrived
Playing his pipes at the foot of my bed,
Searching through the bureau drawers for his lost shadow.

At first I read the poem in gulps, like swallowing chocolate whole,
Just happy to be holding something from you, something that made me
Feel those other days, the magic fairy dust.

The second time I read it, I felt the air in the lines, the structure,
The girders lying beneath the words. And the third time I read it,
I recognized that, however many lives we live, whatever land we fly to,
The stars will guide us still.

Dryers spin off balance as I hold the pages in my hand. My daughter
Reads a chapter book in the scooped plastic chair. Look, I have a daughter,
Look, you have a son, I have two sons, you have a wife, you have a house, a job.

Into the laundromat walks a man with a red ponytail, short cutoffs.
How jealous I am he has only one load, uses only one dryer,
While my daughter and I have three carts hung with shirts like
The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

His face, when I finally see it, is yours.
That boyish, pixie charm. Here is Pan all grown up,
Folding his laundry, shadow sewn securely to the backs of his heels.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

On this day in 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union. Today, it is simultaneously unthinkable and revered by many who celebrate Virginia's past. Even the governor of the commonwealth celebrated Virginia's Confederate past with a proclamation.

I don't understand how someone can revere the very thing that brought this nation to its knees and wrought the bloodiest battles of its history. Study it, of course. Learn from it, assuredly. But regard it with pride? I shake my head sadly. The very word adopted by the secessionists, "confederate," is defined as a plot by henchmen, an unsavory deed. That is not my Virginia.

My Virginia is the Blue Ridge Mountains, rolling softly like the spine of the land. It's the softness of the vowels and flat As spoken by those native to the southern end. It's the dogwoods exploding in the spring along Skyline Drive and the Beltway. It's the Southern land cradling the nation's capitol. It's Monticello, Mount Vernon, Montpelier, those who built and nurtured the nation. It's the names of rivers and mountain ranges foreign-sounding to a native of the West. It has more universities than you can shake a stick at, each with its own rich history and personality. It's an eclectic mix of rich and poor, urban and rural, crowded and cavernous, that threatens to divide itself yet again but won't. And so I share this poem, celebrating its beauty. Enjoy.

Virginia Evening

Just past dusk I passed Christiansburg,
cluster of lights sharpening
as the violet backdrop of the Blue Ridge
darkened. Not stars
but blue-black mountains rose
before me, rose like sleep
after hours of driving, hundreds of miles
blurred behind me. My eyelids
were so heavy but I could see
far ahead a summer thunderstorm flashing,
lightning sparking from cloud
to mountaintop. I drove toward it,
into the pass at Ironto, the dark
now deeper in the long steep grades,
heavy in the shadow of mountains weighted
with evergreens, with spruce, pine,
and cedar. How I wished to sleep
in that sweet air, which filled--
suddenly over a rise--with the small
lights of countless fireflies. Everywhere
they drifted, sweeping from the trees
down to the highway my headlights lit.
Fireflies blinked in the distance
and before my eyes, just before
the windshield struck them and they died.
Cold phosphorescent green, on the glass
their bodies clung like buds bursting
the clean line of a branch in spring.
How long it lasted, how many struck
and bloomed as I drove on, hypnotic
stare fixed on the road ahead, I can't say.
Beyond them, beyond their swarming
bright deaths came the rain, a shower
which fell like some dark blessing.
Imagine when I flicked the windshield wipers on
what an eerie glowing beauty faced me.
In that smeared, streaked light
diminished sweep by sweep you could have seen
my face. It was weary, shocked, awakened,
alive with wonder far after the blades and rain
swept clean the light of those lives
passed, like stars rolling over
the earth, now into other lives.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Rae Armantrout was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Versed, described as "a book striking for its wit and linguistic inventiveness, offering poems that are often little thought-bombs detonating in the mind long after the first reading." Enjoy this poem, which is included in the book and first published in Poetry magazine.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I was leaving a country of rain for a country of apples. I hadn't much time. I told my beloved to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, a black patch like a pirate might wear over his sharpest eye. My own bags were full of salt, which made them shifty, hard to lift. Houses had fallen, face first, into the mud at the edge of the sea. Hurry, I thought, and my hands were like birds. They could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Then a white tree blossomed over the bed, all white blossoms, a painted tree. "Oh," I said, or my love said to me. We want to be human, always, again, so we knelt like children at prayer while our lost mothers hushed us. A halo of bees. I was dreaming as hard as I could dream. It was fast—how the apples fattened and fell. The country that rose up to meet me was steep as a mirror; the gold hook gleamed.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom, and half her side—
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!
Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;
Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
Deep from within she seems half-way
To lift some weight with sick assay,
And eyes the maid and seeks delay;
Then suddenly as one defied
Collects herself in scorn and pride,
And lay down by the Maiden's side!—
And in her arms the maid she took,
Ah wel-a-day!
And with low voice and doleful look
These words did say:
'In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell,
Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
When a woman loves a man it is one-ten in the morning,
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.
When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"
When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water ruching over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.
Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?
When he says, "Ours is a transitional era."
"That's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the Martini he is sipping.
They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.
One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.
When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.
When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

Friday, April 9, 2010

It is no secret, my love of books. I hope also it is no secret I hold an equally deep love for libraries, especially public ones. The first tax-supported public library opened on this day in 1833, in Peterborough, N.H., and it stands today with more than 9,000 other public libraries that feed our need for information and resources.

You may not be able to get a subscription to the Post or pay for Internet connection, but you know you can get that at the library — as well as books in many languages, DVDs, recorded books and reference material and magazines from all over the world.

We talk about all of the things we can live without in economic hard times. Some jurisdictions seem to think libraries are one of those things that can come and go when "times get tough." You and I know better. Call your mayor, call your chairman, call your parish president or county leader and make sure they know that, too.

While we're at it, let's have a shout-out to all of the librarians out there who know where, when and how to find out anything we need to know (whether we knew it or not). Between them and the Dewey Decimal System, we're saved!

HEAR IT AGAIN

'For out of olde feldes, as men seyth,
Cometh al this newe corne yer by yere,
And out of olde bokes, in good feyth,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.'

Chaucer: The Parlement of Foules

Fourteen centuries have learned,
From charred remains, that what took place
When Alexandria's library burned
Brain-damaged the human race.

Whatever escaped
Was hidden by bookish monks in their damp cells
Hunted by Alfred dug for by Charlemagne
Got through the Dark Ages little enough but enough
For Dante and Chaucer sitting up all night

looking for light.

A Serbian Prof's insanity,
Commanding guns, to split the heart,
His and his people's, tore apart
The Sarajevo library.

Tyrants know where to aim
As Hitler poured his petrol and tossed matches
Stalin collected the bards...
In other words the mobile and only libraries...

of all those enslaved peoples from the Black to
the Bering Sea

And made a bonfire
Of the mainsprings of national identities to melt

the folk into one puddle

And the three seconds of the present moment
By massacring those wordy fellows whose memories were

bigger than armies.

Where any nation starts awake
Books are the memory. And it's plain
Decay of libraries is like
Alzheimer's in the nation's brain.

And in my own day in my own land
I have heard the fiery whisper: 'We are here
To destroy the Book
To destroy the rooted stock of the Book and
The Book's perennial vintage, destroy it
Not with a hammer or a sickle
And not exactly according to Mao who also
Drained the skull of adult and adolescent
To build a shining new society
With the empties...'

For this one's dreams and that one's acts
For all who've failed or aged beyond
The reach of teachers, here are found
The inspiration and the facts.

As we all know and have heard all our lives
Just as we've heard that here.

Even the most misfitting child
Who's chanced upon the library's worth,
Sits with the genius of the Earth
And turns the key to the whole world.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

I know Mr. Milburn was featured recently on this blog, but I can't help but share yet another of his works. Achingly lovely and tragic. I can't look away. I don't want to look away. I bet you feel the same way.

On the Phone

That whooshing, watery,
radio-being-tuned sound
tells me he's outdoors
on his way somewhere
and I'd better talk fast.
I can't remember
the last time I phoned him
without dreading that countdown
to when he says, "I'm going
into the subway, Dad, got to go."
Lately, he even calls me from the street—
a convenient way to keep
his keeping in touch short. He's right—
I'd talk to him for an hour,
marching through my pent-up questions.
It tires me, wanting him so much,
the resistance with which he responds.
I bet there's a girl out there
he'd duck into a lobby
to keep speaking to
as long as she desired. Instead,
he tells me that I'm breaking up,
and there's a sound
as if he's dropped the phone
into a rushing river, which then
pulls him in too, his life.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

How were we to know, leaving your two kids
behind in New Hampshire for our honeymoon
at twenty-one, that it was a trick of cheap
hotels in New York City to draw customers
like us inside by displaying a fancy lobby?
Arriving in our fourth-floor room, we found
a bed, a scarred bureau, and a bathroom door
with a cut on one side the exact shape
of the toilet bowl that was in its way
when I closed it. I opened and shut the door,
admiring the fit and despairing of it. You
discovered the initials of lovers carved
on the bureau's top in a zigzag, breaking heart.
How wrong the place was to us then,
unable to see the portents of our future
that seem so clear now in the naiveté
of the arrangements we made, the hotel's
disdain for those with little money,
the carving of pain and love. Yet in that room
we pulled the covers over ourselves and lay
our love down, and in this way began our unwise
and persistent and lucky life together.

Monday, April 5, 2010

David and I hiked portions of the Shenandoah National Park yesterday, and I suspect by the time you read this, our bodies will be screaming at us for hiking miles uphill. (Plus, while it's too early to tell, I'm sure I got "a little sun," which is a euphemism for blondes for "Holy moly, am I pink! Why do I eschew sunscreen, especially this early in the season?")

In dubious honor of this occasion, I searched the Internet for "hiking+poetry" and found a description of the Hyla Brook Nature/Poetry Trail. There you can wander off a trail and — well, let me have the people at trails.com tell you:

The Hyla Brook Nature/Poetry Trail is certainly the shortest walk in this hiker’s guide, an abbreviated amble barely straying from the meadow that interrupts the woods behind the Robert Frost homestead. It’s a simple stroll, spare and unadorned, like the poetry inspired by the hard realities of life encountered on this farm. Should you arrive, however, with the necessary resource of an inquiring mind, your journey here will expand well beyond the confines of the trail. Special attractions: The poems and observations of a backyard naturalist in the context of his rural environment. A separate tour of Frost's house and barn is also seasonally available.

As a result, I simply must share a Robert Frost poem, courtesy of poemhunter.com.

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love, The which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfill.